Do you know gleaning? This very old way of emptying the fields is enjoying a second modern life. Thousands of volunteers roam the countryside of Quebec to fight against hunger, waste and, to some extent, the shortage of agricultural labour.
Between two rows of ripe eggplants, Éloïse Chamberland is busy harvesting countless vegetables from a Mauricie estate. “It’s juicy,” she says along with a dozen other pickers. They participate in a gleaning session organized by Maski Récolte, a community group, and empty the field of a local farmer for free.
In fact, not quite for free. Volunteers can keep a third of the total raised for themselves; the second third goes to the farmer himself; the last third goes to food banks. A win-win-win recipe, according to all the participants.
“It’s gratifying,” says Marie-France Gagnon, a picker who harvested a little less eggplant. “It could create richer social ties. If each of us had as a civic duty to give a little time each year, there would be no shortage of labor in the fields. Or in any case, we would help to alleviate the shortage. »
“What is four hours in a summer? » she emphasizes.
An immemorial way of doing things
Gleaning is not a new concept: it has been practiced since time immemorial in cereal fields in Europe. It was even made a formal right in France in 1554 to maintain social peace. The poorer population could then, without warning the farmer, pick up what remained in the bottom of the rows. But only once the farmer himself had harvested.
In Quebec, gleaning initiatives are sprouting up everywhere. Each summer sees its number of participating farmers and volunteers grow. The labor shortage, on the one hand, and the significant rise in grocery prices, on the other, are not unrelated to this fruitful marriage between producers and consumers.
Most of the time, the gleaners come after the employees. But the field is sometimes perfectly full. In the Outaouais, for example, gleaning interests a new generation of producers attracted by a community vision of their exploitation, relates François Pays, coordinator of the Regional consultation table on hunger and social development. .
“For small farms, it can be interesting. To pick on a large scale, it takes either mechanization or immigrant labor, but it is not accessible to all types of exploitation. »
For small farms, it can be interesting. To pick on a large scale, it takes either mechanization or immigrant labor, but it is not accessible to all types of exploitation.
This gives a helping hand when “everything happens at the same time”, observes Karine Routhier, from the Les Butineurs collective, established since 2020 in Lac-Saint-Jean. “Big producers don’t call us, but small or medium-sized ones call us. I now have about twenty. Just this morning, we pulled out 150 pounds of beans in two hours. [L’entreprise compte] just two employees. They would never have been able to do everything. […] We’ve already been 25 in the carrot field. We got almost 2,000 books out of the field in a few hours. »
Against hunger and waste
Harvesting surpluses to fight waste began in Quebec a few years ago with a few kilos of fruit from Montreal trees. Today, hundreds of tons of fresh produce are picked by thousands of volunteer arms from all four corners of the region.
In the Mauricie region alone, more than 700 volunteers offer their service to glean the crops, more than the fields can provide. Gleaning calls come very quickly during the summer and fall, when the producer is overwhelmed or when a heavy rain threatens to ruin a harvest. “We created a list of volunteers at the end of the spring. We register and wait for confirmation. We send an email 24 or 48 hours before picking,” explains Jescika Lavergne, coordinator of the Cultive sharing project.
Among the dozen gleaners gathered in this small field in Mauricie, there are retirees who come for pleasure, others without much means who come to get food or even workers who simply want to “avoid waste”.
Anne de Grandpré, who is in her second year of gleaning in Louiseville, is occupying her retirement summer with picking sessions in full sun. “It allows you to discover cultures and producers. You have to like picking anyway. Afterwards, for us, it’s candy,” she says, a smile on her lips and the trunk of her car filled with fresh vegetables.
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.
